Born to Trouble (26 page)

Pearl wanted to hold on to him but now Fred and Walter were awkwardly embracing her and the moment was lost. As the three melted into the darkness she called out, ‘Seth!’ but he didn’t answer. Short of running after him there was nothing she could do, and instinctively she knew the end result would be the same. He wasn’t going to stay. She was losing him and Fred and Walter once again, but this time because Seth had determined it that way. How could he be so blind, so stupid? He was cruel. No, no, he wasn’t. He was doing this for her, for the three of them. But she didn’t want to be alone again. That was how she felt. She had James and Patrick, but in this moment she felt numbingly alone. She wanted Seth. She wanted to be cared for and protected. She was tired and frightened and cold.

‘Pearl?’ James and Patrick were standing in front of her and she forced herself to respond as Patrick tugged at her wet coat-sleeve. ‘Are they really not coming back?’

‘No.’

‘They’re our brothers, aren’t they? Why can’t they stay?’

Wearily, Pearl picked up the bags she’d dropped when Seth had appeared. ‘They just can’t, that’s all.’

‘That – that’s not fair.’

Patrick’s voice broke and it was the spur which enabled her to pull herself together. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders. ‘Come on, we’re going home. You two are wet through and you’ll catch your death if we don’t get you out of these clothes. You’ll have to strip off and get into bed while I light the fire and the room warms up, and then once the fire’s going we’ll have toast and dripping. How about that?’

In the bustle of sorting her brothers out and lighting the fire and getting some hot tea down them once the kettle had boiled, Pearl didn’t open the brown package immediately. They only had one candle left, and although she lit it initially because the room was as black as pitch, as soon as the fire gave sufficient light she snuffed it out.

While they waited for the fire to die down to a red glow so they could toast the bread, Pearl let the boys eat the fruit they’d bought that day. It was then, sitting in the armchair, that she reached for the brown package, holding it against her chest for a second because it was a link with Seth.

She still couldn’t seem to take in that Mr Fallow was dead. That Seth and the others had murdered him. Murder . . . She shivered. But Mr Fallow had wanted her dead, and the lads. It was only because of that he had come to Seth’s attention in the first place. And this was the money Mr Fallow had paid out for her demise. He had thought he’d been buying men to kill her.

The slim package was tied with string and Pearl fumbled with the knot for a moment. Then the string was loose and she folded back the brown paper. The sound she made as she saw the wad of notes brought James and Patrick scrambling out of bed to her side as naked as the day they were born.

‘Holy Joe . . .’ Patrick reached out a hand and touched the money reverently.

Pearl was too taken aback to admonish him about his language. She stared at the notes and then raised her gaze to Patrick and James. Their faces reflected her amazement and disbelief.

‘How much is there?’ James, the ever practical one, asked.

‘Light the candle.’ If ever an occasion demanded sufficient illumination, this one did. Once the candle was lit and at her elbow, she counted the notes slowly. Sixty pounds. She was holding in her hand
sixty pounds
. It was a fortune. She could get the boys’ boots mended tomorrow, perhaps even buy them new boots, and some warm clothes, too – they needed another set. These thoughts raced through her mind even as she said flatly, ‘We can’t take it.’

‘What? Why? It’s ours, Seth gave it to us an’ it was his to give.’

‘James, you heard what he said and how he got it. It – it’s not right.’

‘Seth said it was at- atone-’

‘Atonement.’

‘Aye, that’s it. That means makin’ up for something, don’t it? An’ that’s why he gave you it. And whatever you say, our Pearl, it was his to give. Mr Fallow had paid him with it, him and Walter and Fred, so it was theirs. It’s not like they robbed someone.’

She stared at her brother in the flickering light from the candle, her head whirling. She didn’t know what to do.
Oh
,
Seth, Seth, I don’t know what to do
.

Patrick settled the matter. ‘Anyway, you can’t give it back,’ he said with immense satisfaction. ‘There’s no one to give it to. Mr Fallow is dead and Seth has gone, and Seth wouldn’t take it back even if you knew where he was. He said he wanted you to have it till we could work and look after you, so that’s that.’

Pearl became aware that the boys were shivering, and as she shooed them back into bed James paused to hug her. ‘Did Mr Fallow hurt you very much?’ he asked hesitantly.

Ushering him into bed where he snuggled down beside Patrick, Pearl nodded. She didn’t want to elaborate on what she had already told them. Maybe if they asked when they were older, she might feel differently.

‘Then this is all his fault, isn’t it? The workhouse schoolmaster used to say that everything we did had consequences . . .’

‘Normally before he caned us,’ Patrick put in.

‘. . . And that if we didn’t want bad things to happen, we had to be good.’

Pearl smiled at the two little faces looking at her so earnestly. Out of the mouth of babes.

Pearl didn’t sleep much that night. Long after the candle had burned away and the fire was reduced to glowing embers, she sat in the darkness listening to the boys’ heavy breathing, her mind racing. The precious brown package was tied up and hidden under her shawl in the chest of drawers, but although she couldn’t see it, it filled her vision.

Slowly the enormity of what her brothers had done for her dawned. Not only had Seth and the others saved her and the lads from something terrible, but they’d given her the means of taking James and Patrick out of this tiny cramped room and hand-to-mouth existence. Sixty pounds would enable her to rent two good-size rooms in a respectable house. The boys would be old enough for Saturday jobs soon, and with what she earned and their extra bit they’d manage fine until the lads left school and started earning properly. They could furnish the rooms with bits and pieces bought cheap from the Old Market or secondhand shops, and they’d be set up. The worry of the immediate future had been taken away in one fell swoop.

Or – her heart began to thump – she could go with this idea that had been gathering strength all night, the idea that carried a certain amount of risk with it.

All through Sunday she pondered what she was going to do, changing her mind umpteen times before once more sleeping badly, in spite of the fact that she and the boys had gone for a long walk in the afternoon. Then she woke up early on Monday morning, her mind made up. At six o’clock she lit the fire and a little while later woke her brothers with two steaming cups of tea.

‘I’m not going into work today,’ she told them. If her idea worked out, her days in the pickling factory were over. ‘Once you’re dressed and ready for school, we’re going to buy our breakfast from that little cafe in High Street East before you go to school, and I’m going into town. I’m going to get you both a thick winter coat and new boots, as your old ones are like colanders. But first -’ she paused, looking at them as they stared at her over the tops of their cups – ‘first I’m going to look into renting a shop.’

She really had their attention now. ‘A shop?’ Patrick’s hair had been cut so short in the workhouse that it shouldn’t stick up, but somehow it always managed to. ‘What sort of shop?’

‘I’m going to sell pies and puddings and soup, and brawn, definitely brawn, and meat rolls.’ She stood up and began to pace back and forth. ‘Corinda, the Romany lady I told you about, she taught me all about herbs and things, and I was better than her in the end. She said I had a flair for cooking that was born in someone rather than learned. I could do wonders with the toughest meat, and some of the stews and soups the Romanies cooked were better than anything you’ll ever taste, I promise you. And I know how to do it. I
can
do it. It’ll be hard work at first, of course, and I’ll have to buy all the stuff I need and pots and pans.’ She paused for breath. ‘What do you think?’

Before they could reply, she went on, ‘We’ll rent somewhere with living space above if we can, as it’ll be better to live in, especially at the beginning. Once you get home from school you can help me and at weekends. And I can show you what I do. For the future, you know? When you leave school you can work with me.’ Again she paused, and this time when she said, ‘What do you think?’ she waited for them to speak.

Their faces were wreathed in smiles. Neither boy could think of anything better than living above a shop that sold food. James answered for the pair of them when he said, ‘How soon can we go?’

‘Soon.’ There was a well of excitement bubbling up inside her and it went some way to quelling the words which had come to haunt her through the dark night hours:
Born to trouble, you’ll take trouble wherever you lay your head. It’s a curse, and woe betide any man who’s drawn to you.
She knew Halimena had always hated her, but in the middle of the night when the human spirit was low she’d had to fight against the old woman’s denunciation.

She wouldn’t believe there was a curse on her. She looked at James and Patrick’s bright faces. But even if there was, she could break it and make a good life for these two. She could say with hand on heart that she wouldn’t have wished Mr Fallow to die at the hands of her brothers, but in all honesty she wasn’t sorry he was dead. That might be wicked, but that’s how she felt. If just one little bairn was saved from what she’d suffered because he was no more, it was worth it.

As for Christopher and Byron . . . She turned away from the boys, saying, ‘Come on then, out of bed and get dressed and we’ll see about that breakfast.’ Christopher and Byron were lost to her, each in their own way. She knew now things would have come to a head with Byron sooner or later. She couldn’t have wed him – meeting Christopher had shown her that would have been a terrible mistake for them both. And in refusing him, she would have been forced to leave the gypsies. But Christopher. Oh, Christopher . . .

None of that.
The little voice that had talked sense during the night switched on in her mind.
What is done is done. To dwell on it weakens you, and you can’t afford to be weak, not with the boys looking to you. You go on from here, and who would have thought even a couple of days ago that such power would be placed in your hands.

And money was power. She had always known it – bairns in the East End were born with the knowledge – but the confrontation with Christopher’s family had cemented the fact. James and Patrick weren’t going to go the way of their big brothers, nor were they going to spend their days down a mine or in the steelworks where fatalities were commonplace. She couldn’t protect them from everything in life, she knew that, but she could equip them with the sort of power Seth had given her last night. That was why she had to make this money work for them. A fortune it might be, but even fortunes could be lost. She wouldn’t let that happen.

Breakfast was a merry affair, although Pearl was a little worried Patrick might be sick with the number of sausages he’d consumed as she waved them off in the direction of school.

When they were lost to view she crossed High Street East and turned into the tightly packed terraced streets south of the river. She knew where she was making for. It would have been nice to look for somewhere in the main part of town and escape the East End, but commonsense told her she couldn’t compete with the grand shops and eating houses already there. In the East End she would still have competition with the pie shops and places like the Old Market which had stalls selling hot food along with everything else, but she hoped that with the skills she’d learned from the Romanies and her own natural ability she could produce superior food at low prices.

She had recently noticed that a little shop not far from the pickling factory had become vacant – she’d passed it on her way to work in the mornings. It was situated on the corner of Zion Street and had been a ‘pot’ shop, selling anything from pots and pans to paraffin oil and sweets, although the window had been so thick with grime you could barely see inside.

She had brought the brown-paper package with her, tucked down the front of her bodice inside her petticoat next to her skin. She didn’t dare leave it in the chest of drawers. Not that she really thought anyone would go poking and prying in their room, since those who lived in the area would know that no one had anything to steal, but still . . .

There were the normal snotty-nosed bairns playing their games when she reached Zion Street. In spite of the freezing weather and dull sky several of them had no coats or hats, and a couple of little boys were barefoot. She glanced at these two, their straggly hair white with nits. This could have been James and Patrick five years ago, because she had no doubt that her mother would not have lifted a finger to keep them clean.

The shop was different from the terraced houses stretching down the street inasmuch as it had a large bay window made up of little panes of glass. The bottom lefthand pane had been cleaned and a notice stuck to it which read,
Premises to let or buy. Forfurther information kindly contact Charlton & Son, estate agents, no. 42 Fawcett Street.

‘Ain’t no use you lookin’ in there. Old Ma Potts is six foot under an’ the shop’s shut up.’

One of the two lads she’d noticed had left the others and was standing looking at her. ‘Is that so?’ She smiled at the dirty face but a pair of dark brown eyes surveyed her solemnly.

‘Aye. Dropped down dead over there by that lamp-post, she did.’

‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Had to fetch the Constable to her.’ A lingering amazement was evident in the boy’s tone. Pearl could understand this. It wasn’t often any of the East End residents voluntarily called a policeman. ‘And then she was took away.’